Maria Bello is ready to get married.
The “NCIS” actress announced on Sunday night that she is engaged to her French chef girlfriend, Dominique Crenn, 53. Bello revealed the news to Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet at Elton John’s annual Oscar viewing party.
“We’re pretty happy considering we just got engaged,” the 52-year-old actress said with a smile. “So, this is sort of our fun time out in Hollywood for the first time since we’ve been engaged.”
The couple revealed that they got engaged in Paris in December. “It was very surprising but meant to be,” Bello confessed. “It’s about time! I’m finally grown up enough to get married.”
When asked why they click, Bello replied, “I think we just light each other up,” while Crenn said, “Love and joy and I think we cook for each other.”
(Crenn certainly knows how to rustle something up in the kitchen. She is the only female chef in the U.S. to attain three Michelin stars for her San Francisco restaurant Atelier Crenn).
Bello shares her 18-year-old son, Jackson, with former partner Dan McDermott. She previously dated her former best friend Clare Munn from 2011-2016.
“We had an immediate connection but didn’t think of it as romantic or sexual,” the “Prisoners” star wrote in a New York Times article about Munn. “She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically.”
In 2015, Bello published a book of essays, “Whatever….Love is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves,” which explored sexual fluidity.